In 1903 there were no more resignations, but tragedy struck the family in another way. In October Emma Booth-Tucker, commander in chief of the Salvation Army in the United States, was traveling by train when her carriage derailed and hit a water tower. Forty-three-year-old Emma was the only passenger killed. She left behind a distraught husband and six young children. Eva took over as national commander of America, and Fredrick made plans to return to London with the children.
The news clippings of the funeral reached William in London. The New York Daily News reported, “It is said that the funeral was the largest held in the city for a woman, and that the crowd which followed her to her grave was the largest which ever attended any public funeral except that of General Grant.”
With the newspaper clippings were a handwritten note from Eva and a short prayer written by Motee, Emma’s twelve-year-old daughter. Motee had read the prayer at her mother’s grave:
O Lord, we thank Thee that our mother died upon the battlefield. She did not die at home. But there upon the prairie she left her sword. O Lord, don’t allow us to let it lie there, but help us to pick it up and go forward, so that when we die, You may say to us, “Well done!” Don’t let us live so that you will have to say we have just done ordinarily, or middling, but let us live so that you will say, “Well done! You have done the best that could be done!”—as you said to our precious Mama.
“That granddaughter of mine is cast in the family mould,” William mused to himself after he read the prayer. Then quietly he shut the door to his office, laid his head on his desk, and wept.
Still, an old soldier must press on, and that is just what William Booth did. In June of the following year, he was invited to Buckingham Palace for an audience with King Edward VII. The king commended William on the work of the Salvation Army and the role it played in improving the lives of countless British citizens. Before William left, the king asked for his autograph. William wrote:
Your Majesty,
Some men’s ambition is art,
Some men’s ambition is fame,
Some men’s ambition is gold,
My ambition is the souls of men.
As William’s work of winning the souls of men continued, it did so in a modern way. It was the dawn of the automobile, and William quickly realized that if he traveled in one of these new contraptions, he could visit many of the smaller towns and villages that were not readily accessible by train. He assigned Bramwell to work out the details, and on August 9, 1904, William set out with a motorcade of six cars to reach people along the highways and byways of England. William rode in an open Napier touring car with red wheels. Accompanying him on the trip were his old friends and fellow soldiers, George Railton and Elijah Cadman.
Riding in a motorcar could be a harrowing experience. The roads were narrow, rutted, and dusty. And when it rained, they could quickly turn into a sea of mud that could bog a car down to its axles. And the horses that shared the roads did not take kindly to automobiles. It was not uncommon for them to rear and bolt when a car approached. Yet all of these inconveniences did not deter seventy-five-year-old William Booth. Rather they energized him! A month later he had traveled a bone-jarring 1,224 miles and addressed 164 meetings. Some of these meetings were small affairs held outside butcher shops in tiny villages, while others were huge and attended by lords and mayors alike. Some of William’s favorite stopovers were factories, where the owners would often stop the machines to allow everyone to hear him speak. Once, on the street outside their factory, seven hundred hardened workmen knelt as William led them in a simple prayer.
In the spring of 1905, William was off again, this time to inspect Salvation Army outposts in Australia and New Zealand. En route he visited the Holy Land to fulfill a lifelong dream. On March 9, 1905, William knelt in the Garden of Gethsemane, where under the shade of an ancient olive tree, he fervently prayed for God to bless the world. When he rose, he paused to speak to a leper and kiss his hand. From there he toured Solomon’s temple and the tomb of Lazarus at Bethany. He also carried the Salvation Army flag up Mount Calvary and then led the Salvationists with him in reciting the last verse of the hymn “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross.”
Upon his return from New Zealand and Australia, William received another honor. On October 26, 1905, William, accompanied by Bramwell and a thousand officers, marched through the crowded streets of London from the Salvation Army’s international headquarters to the Guildhall. The city fathers had wanted to send a lavish coach for William to ride in, but William had refused, choosing instead to walk like a common man.
At the Guildhall William was handed a small oak casket. The city fathers had wanted it to be a gold casket, but William had rejected the idea, calling such a casket a waste. Inside the oak casket was a sheet of parchment conferring on William the Freedom of the City of London. Also inside the casket were one hundred guineas, the amount of money the city would have spent on the gold casket.
In his speech at the ceremony, Sir Joseph Dimsdale, the city chamberlain, talked of the “imperishable monuments” William had erected. “These,” he said, “speak of a divine ambition and a zeal the boldest patriot might be proud to feel. We are glad to pay the highest tribute which can be rendered by us and accepted by him, namely the regard of the City of London—and through the city, our country—expressed in our offer of the Freedom of a City which has ever striven for religious liberty; and a city which has benefited incalculably by General Booth’s exertions.”
After the ceremony William trudged back to Salvation Army headquarters, where he promptly placed the one hundred guineas in the social fund.
Not to be outdone by London, Nottingham, the city of William’s birth, decided it was time to honor him. City fathers there conferred on him the Freedom of the City.
William made another tour to the United States in 1907. He listened with great pride as Commander Eva Booth told him about how Salvation Army soldiers had toiled in the aftermath of the San Francisco earthquake. Many people lost everything in the tragedy, and the army had rallied round to provide food, shelter, and comfort to people.
It was on his sixth motor tour of Great Britain that William finally met an enemy he could not face down. He had traveled fifteen hundred miles in five weeks. Then in Monmouthshire he was crippled over with pain in his right eye. Soon William could not see, and reluctantly he called a halt to the tour and returned to London to see a specialist. The doctor gave William some hopeful news. He had cataracts in both eyes, but they could be operated on.
The surgery on William’s eyes was carried out just before Christmas 1908, and it appeared the operation had been a complete success. Early in the new year William was back on the road in his motorcade. Sadly, the scar in his left eye did not heal properly, and William quickly found himself blind in one eye. He returned to London, where his doctor ordered him to rest. But no one was going to give General William Booth orders! He continued his busy schedule, embarking on a visit to Europe.
In Sweden he had an audience with King Gustav, and in Norway he met with King Haakon. In Norway William was also gratified to learn that his wife’s namesake, the lifeboat Catherine Booth, had been put to excellent use. During the cod fishing season of February and March, it plied the waters around the Lofoten Islands. So far it had rescued sixteen hundred boats, towing them to the safety of the majestic fjords. About forty-five hundred fishermen had been saved during those rescues. The Catherine Booth spent the remainder of the year ferrying Salvation Army officers to remote fishing villages. As a result of the lifesaving work the Catherine Booth did, the officers received a warm welcome and preached to attentive ears.
At first William managed to get along quite well with sight in only one eye, but as the sight in his right eye began to deteriorate, he faced many new challenges. It became increasingly difficult for him to see the edges of the platform when he spoke, and those around him were concerned that he might walk right over the edge. To help prevent this, his secretary would outline the stage in large quantities of white ribbon, the color that William found easiest to distinguish. Even when he could no longer see his audience, William held them spellbound, from the humblest housecleaner to the kings and princes who came to hear him speak.
William insisted that all the news that came into Salvation Army headquarters from around the world be read aloud to him. He wanted to know what was happening in every area of his command so that he could pray and dictate notes of encouragement. He smiled when he heard of Eva’s latest idea. She had declared Thanksgiving Day 1909 “Boozer’s Day.” On this day the Salvation Army in New York City mounted an all-out campaign to alert citizens to the horror of alcoholism and bring hope to the alcoholics themselves. They achieved this in a style that William himself would have been pleased to invent. Since there was no public bus service on Thanksgiving Day, Eva was able to hire the green double-decker buses that normally drove up and down Fifth Avenue. Members of the Salvation Army manned the buses, along with a large wagon from the city water department. Young girls banged tambourines and men blew tubas as they made their way. When they encountered a pub, a number of the Salvation Army officers would leap from the buses to “invade” the drinking establishment, where they begged, pleaded with, and cajoled drunks to board the buses and the wagon and go to the army’s memorial hall with them.
People watched in amazement as the unusual procession made its way, led by a giant papier-mâché whiskey bottle with a man chained to it. Men moved along beside the buses and wagon to make sure none of the twelve hundred drunks on board fell off or tried to run away. At the Salvation Army hall the bewildered drunks stumbled inside to be served strong, black coffee and donuts.
Inside the hall the atmosphere was soon ripe with the smell of unwashed bodies and alcohol. Many of the reporters who had rushed to the scene were barely able to stay in the room, but members of the Salvation Army, who overlooked the stench, moved compassionately among the drunks. After the men had sobered up some, they were issued a challenge. Who would invite God to help them change their ways? Two hundred men surged forward and knelt at the penitent form. Some of them were destined to rank among the Salvation Army’s best soldiers.
In a letter to her father, Eva relayed how the parade had caused a firestorm of publicity. For the first time many men in city government had become aware of the vast numbers of drunks in the city and the need to help them find a way out of their predicament. William sent a telegram to Eva with just two words in it: “Fully approve.”
By early 1912 William’s doctor convinced him to have another eye operation. Before he went into the hospital, William spoke to seven thousand Salvation Army officers at London’s Albert Hall. While physically frail, his voice carried to the back of the hall as he delivered what was to be the last of over sixty thousand sermons he had preached in his life. In the process of delivering all those sermons, he had crisscrossed the world many times, covering over five million miles.
William’s final sermon was as short and easy to understand as always, and it hammered the same themes he had faithfully preached on throughout his life. He ended the sermon by saying, “While women weep as they do now, I’ll fight; while little children go hungry as they do now, I’ll fight; while men go to prison, in and out, in and out, I’ll fight; while there yet remains one dark soul without the light of God, I’ll fight—I’ll fight to the very end!”
